Almost every biological anthropology text-book I've ever looked at has described the adaptations of human populations to the environments they occupy. Examples they give are the short stalky Inuit adapted to conserving heat in cold environments, the long lanky East African nomads adapted to far distant travels, and the barrel chested Peruvian and Tibetans living... Continue Reading →
Debunking Lee Berger’s Palaun Dwarf Population
Lee Berger's got a big problem. Rex Dalton was on his case earlier this year about Berger's political and cultural approach to his Palaun study. And now Scott Fitzpatrick, one of the most vocal critics of Berger's dwarves from Palau, has a new paper out in the open access journal PLoS One, where he sinks... Continue Reading →
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s Interview and Pardis Sabeti in Nature
Right on the coat tails of Jon's post on discussing race comes an interview with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a really distinguished and now emeritus population geneticist from Stanford, in Nature News. His work has been very controversial because he has consistently resisted the notion that ‘race’ has any useful biological meaning. His work has been... Continue Reading →